


First Moves

by anticyclone



Category: Kate Daniels - Ilona Andrews
Genre: Banter, Getting Together, Kidnapping, M/M, Pining, Rescue, Treat Fic, off-screen bad guy death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/pseuds/anticyclone
Summary: "If they come back to sell me off for my pelt, I'm going to disembowel somebody," Ascanio declared to nobody."You should've tried disemboweling somebody before you got captured," nobody declared back, from the other side of the still-shut door.Ascanio was just minding his own business. He really didn't ask to be jumped by four attackers and a mage. He definitely didn't ask to wake up in a silver cage in the middle of nowhere. And he absolutely did not ask to be rescued by Derek, but he's not in much of a position to argue about that.
Relationships: Ascanio Ferara/Derek Gaunt
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	First Moves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partypaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/gifts).



> partypaprika, I had fun writing for your prompts! I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta. All mistakes are my own.

At least it was winter.

Winter meant that Ascanio had been wearing layers. A shirt and thick sweater kept his back from burning when he accidentally brushed against the wall of the silver cage. And it had been snowing like hell the past week - the whole city was iced over, it looked like a frost giant had exploded (Saiman was unfortunately fine, he'd checked). It also meant he'd had on thick wool socks. Even though the bastards who'd jumped him had stolen his boots before stuffing him in here, his feet weren't completely freezing. Later, when he had gotten out of here, he'd have to thank his mom for the socks.

He blinked and rubbed at his eyes. First he'd have to kill some people. Then he could tell his mom. It was important not to make her worry.

The cage was five sets of silver bars, all welded and bolted deep into a concrete floor. Ascanio had tried breaking them. The burns on his hands still hadn't healed, and that had been a couple of hours ago. The cage was too short to stand up and too narrow to lie down.

Too small to shift, too.

So Ascanio sat with his legs crossed underneath himself. The wool socks kept the silver from hurting his feet too much. Every half hour or so he awkwardly moved around to fold his legs in a slightly different way.

There was no clock in the room. There wasn't anything in the room, besides him and the cage. And a door, but he didn't count that. He knew it had been hours because the burns he had gotten when he'd been unconscious had started to heal up. And he knew he moved around every half hour or so because when he'd interned at Cutting Edge, Kate and Andrea made him study books. All the damn time. Thirty minutes had been the longest he could go without checking the clock.

So every time he looked up to check the blank wall for a non-existent clock, he also moved his legs around.

Kate's voice kept echoing in his head. _Wiggle your toes, Ascanio,_ and _Stretch your hands, Ascanio_ and _How could you be so stupid, Ascanio?_

Okay, so she'd only said that to him once, when he'd managed to explode macaroni and cheese while trying to cook it in the Cutting Edge microwave. But he was sitting in a silver cage after being jumped by five people so he figured he was entitled to feel stupid.

"Fuck everything," he muttered. He put his elbow on his knee and rested his head against his hand.

There had been a mage. A woman with blonde curls. Two guys had come at him with swords, and he'd jumped back to try to assess the situation. She'd made the icy street wet and slick under his feet. He'd slid. Not slipped, not fell. Just slid.

It was enough time for the two people behind him to brain him with a bat. And then for the mage to conjure chains to lock his arms against his sides. Chains he could've handled. Slick ice and a bat he could've handled. But all at once, plus a needle jammed into the side of his neck… It'd knocked him out. Waking up in the cage had been an ugly few minutes. Whatever they'd injected him with had left a nasty, raised bump on his neck. It should've worried him except he was trying not to worry because what the fucking hell could he do about it while locked in a silver cage?

"If they come back to sell me off for my pelt, I'm going to disembowel somebody," he declared to nobody.

"You should've tried disemboweling somebody before you got captured," nobody declared back, from the other side of the still-shut door.

Ascanio stared at it.

Nobody, whose voice was unfortunately familiar enough that he couldn't even pretend not to recognize it, banged at the door. He banged at it until something cracked. Probably the handle. On the inside of the room, the handle moved like it'd been broken, anyway. Then nobody kicked the door in.

Ascanio stared at him.

"Aren't you going to say thank you?" nobody asked. His voice was growly through the elongated jaws of his half-form, but still understandable.

Hell no. "Get me out of here," Ascanio snapped.

Derek rolled his eyes. But he also took a sledgehammer to the lock on the cage, so Ascanio decided to ignore it.

***

"Where is everybody?"

"What?"

A branch nearly hit Ascanio in the face. He ducked to avoid it. The room with the cage had turned out to be one of three rooms in a small concrete bunker in the middle of a forest. One room had been a bathroom, and one had been a small space crammed with paperwork and gross-smelling old takeout containers and chairs and a couple of dead bodies. Not the mage. Derek had taken him in there to look, for a second, to see if he recognized what was left of the bodies.

The whole thing couldn't have taken more than two minutes. Neither of them had wanted to stick around. But Ascanio had still stood in the doorway and stared for so long that Derek had cleared his throat pointedly.

Ascanio had almost said, _It would have been easier to identify them if you'd left some of their faces,_ but then he would've had to say something about how Derek had taken the time to smash in both of the dead people's faces even though there was no way he'd needed to do that to kill them.

"Where. Is. Backup?" he demanded. In the bunker, all he'd been able to do was nod and say, _Yeah. Recognize the clothes._ He'd warned Derek about the blonde mage who wasn't dead.

And Derek had said, _Yet._

Escape was an ice-encrusted forest. The trees were heavy with it. Branches sagged everywhere he looked. Huge icicles dripped from the wood. The snow on the ground was up to their calves. They must've been north of Atlanta, wherever they were, because the city storms hadn't hit the city this hard. Moving through the snow would've been fine the first day after the storms. Probably the second. But both of them kept having to temper their speed. It would take forever to get out of here on their own.

"Stop complaining," Derek ordered. "You need to keep your strength up. Thinking takes too much energy. For you, anyway."

Since it had still been sunny during the day, half the snow was actually frozen mounds of ice. The top layer melted during the day, refroze at night, and did the same the next day. The result was like slamming headfirst into a brick wall, if you didn't dodge.

Ascanio scrambled over one and pictured throwing Derek down the slope.

But, no. Derek was the one who knew the way out of here. And shifting to warrior form had taken enough out of Ascanio that carrying an unconscious Derek out of the woods would be impossible. 

The only way out of the forest was on foot. Full animal form would leave it hard to fight if they needed to, and Derek was already in warrior form, so that was what Ascanio had chosen too. Shifting had nearly made his sight white out, and he'd had to shake his head to stop everything being blurry. The bump in his neck still hurt. His feet felt fine. The wool socks were a lost cause, as was the rest of his outfit, but even the spots that had burned against the silver bars didn't ache anymore.

He was trying not to think about his neck.

Or the blonde mage.

A flash made Ascanio spin to the left. He skidded along the slope of a snow drift as he did. When he caught himself on a tree, he realized the flash had just been moonlight on ice. He cussed under his breath and turned to catch back up with Derek.

But Derek had stopped and was waiting for him. Staring.

Ascanio really wasn't in the mood to be lectured about keeping up. That was the kind of thing Kate and Andrea could get away with. Kate gave advice when she lectured, and Andrea was his alpha. But Derek lecturing him made his blood boil.

He hissed and started moving forward again. Derek did too, once Ascanio had closed the distance between them.

"We must be lost," Ascanio said. 

"We're not lost."

"Oh, so who should I be smelling for? Huh? Because all I smell is fucking ice, and let me tell you, I am sick of it."

Derek growled, low, in the back of his throat. He started to move sideways. The bulk of him shifted, and Ascanio braced for impact.

Instead of shoving him, though, Derek visibly caught himself. He paused in the middle of a step, forced himself to relax, and went back to concentrating on running. He moved a little away from Ascanio. "We're all sick of ice. But it's February. It snows in February."

"It snows in February," Ascanio repeated back, pitching his voice high and tinny. "It's Atlanta!"

Maddeningly calm, Derek corrected him. "We're actually outside Kennesaw."

"What the hell are we doing in Kennesaw?"

Derek stopped again. Ascanio didn't, not in time, and ended up several feet ahead. He turned to look and Derek's face had turned to stone. Moonlight reflected off his eyes. There was frost on his fur. He opened his jaws, and his breath fogged in the air.

He said: "Because a dumbass got himself kidnapped."

"I'm going to stab you with an icicle."

Derek's hands did connect with Ascanio, this time. He didn't shove. But he did turn Ascanio forcefully back onto the path and pushed until Ascanio had started running again.

The exact positions of the trees changed, but the forest itself stayed the same. Every step was just more snow. Every low-hanging branch was the same as the last. All Ascanio knew about Kennesaw was that at one point there'd been a college there. Then, during an extra-long magic wave in the middle of an extra-long heat wave, one of their research libraries had melted. Just a puddle of weird messy colors on the ground, as if the whole place had been turned to pain that made people scream when they got too close.

Kate had told him and Julie the story one afternoon. He forgot the actual point of it, because then Julie had argued about how that was just a sign that she shouldn't have to go to college, and that had gotten Kate started.

He wondered what the opposite of a melting building was. A forest getting so cold it shattered?

Yeah, yeah. Think about running. Think about moving his legs. Think about the hitch in his side from sitting in one position for so long and not eating and being in this stupid cold.

Don't think about his neck. Which had started to throb.

"Are you seriously telling me you're the only one who came?" he asked. "They sent you out here all on your own? Is the Pack on lockdown or something? Did Raphael and Andrea disown me?"

"If I shove a bunch of snow in your mouth, will you shut up?"

"I'm going to shove a bunch of snow up your-"

"They're at the Keep!" Derek shouted. His voice bounced off the snow, making it echo. Then he sucked in a deep breath, darted around a tree that looked like it was about to fall over dead, and said in a normal (if warped) voice, "Planning. Or they were when I left."

"What do you mean, planning? At the Keep? We're not at the Keep!"

Derek shook a branch as they passed underneath it. It made snow fall over the both of them. Ascanio had to shake himself to make the snow slough off. Derek grinned at him. "No shit," he said.

Now there was snow inside Ascanio's ear. "Why the fuck didn't you wait for anybody?"

"We have to keep moving."

Getting anything else out of Derek was impossible. Ascanio tried for the next five minutes, and Derek just kept repeating that they needed to move. So Ascanio decided to move as fast as he could. He was going to get an answer at some point. Unless Derek planned to bury him in the snow, he couldn't avoid the question forever.

***

What nobody ever talked about was how boring it was to ride in a ley line. Speed this, getting your legs cut off below the knee that, as long as you were in a car or on a cart (they were on a cart), you were set. Set to sit there for over half an hour banging elbows with the person next to you.

"This is as bad as the cage," Ascanio muttered five minutes in.

Again, Derek moved like he was going to shove Ascanio, except shoving Ascanio in their current position would mean throwing him into the ley line and watching the magic rip him apart. So Derek caught himself and put his hands on his knees. His fingers dug into his sweatpants and a muscle in his jaw tightened. "If it's as bad as the cage, maybe I should have left you there," he said.

They'd shifted back to human form. There had been two sets of clothes stored with the cart. Just sweatpants, socks and sneakers, nothing super warm. It was a stupid idea. Ascanio had said so before they'd done it, after they'd done it, and after they'd gotten on the cart. It was narrow enough that they had to sit side-by-side. The only upgrade was that it was also long enough to lie down and rest his head on the wood floor. That was good, because otherwise he'd have his head in Derek's lap. He was so exhausted that the only reason he hadn't fallen asleep was spite.

Derek, of course, was wide awake.

When Ascanio didn't answer, Derek said, "If you think the cart is cramped, I don't know why you wanted to get on here with us both in warrior form."

"We could've fit with just me in warrior form," Ascanio said, rubbing at his face.

"No, we couldn't have."

In the ley line, the sky looked wrong. It was easier to ignore during the day. Clouds looked like they moved faster. When he looked out the sides, the trees were filtered through red-gold ley line light, but they looked the same as passing trees on the highway in a car. But at night… He shut his eyes. The storms had temporarily broken up, so clouds didn't block the view. That meant the stars looked all blurry as they zoomed along the ley line. Even though they weren't moving all that fast.

"You could have at least brought food," Ascanio said.

"When we get to Atlanta," Derek bit out, "I will buy you dinner."

"If this is your idea of a first date, you're never going to get me to put out," Ascanio said.

Derek turned to glower out into the ley line. Like a brooding hero from one of the comics other teenagers at the Keep liked to read. Ascanio had never been able to get into them. "What does it take to get you to treat something seriously?"

Ascanio's first impulse was to say something about three courses and dessert, but he was too tired. It wasn't worth it. He stretched just enough to lay his arm across his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at blurry stars.

"I got jumped, chained up, drugged, and locked in a silver cage. I've spent the last couple hours waiting to see if I was going to be held for ransom or if they were trying to blackmail Kate or if somebody was trying to destroy Clan Bouda. If I take things any more seriously I'll pass out from the strain." Now his throat was dry. He should've brought an icicle with them so he could drink the melt. And the instant he'd mentioned being drugged, his neck had started throbbing again. Maybe he would get really lucky and run into a sympathetic medmage on the way to dinner.

"You got drugged?"

Derek's voice was too close.

Ascanio moved his arm and stared straight up into Derek's face. Derek's brown eyes had gone amber with magic. He had braced a hand on the floor of the cart, next to Ascanio's shoulder, and was leaning over so his face was only a handspan above Ascanio's.

"Uh," Ascanio said. "There were five of them. Did I mention the magic chains?"

"What did they inject you with?"

"The hell should I know? A tranquilizer? What are you-" Ascanio's entire body jerked, shocked, when Derek gingerly touched two fingers to the spot on his neck. Pain lashed down his spine. Derek pulled away but didn't move back. Ascanio wanted to roll over and curl up on his side, except that would put him too close to the edge of the cart. He clenched a fist and pressed it to his forehead instead. "Maybe don't touch the mysterious wound on my throat, okay?"

"Sorry."

It had felt like getting stabbed. The pain radiated down Ascanio's neck and through his shoulder. Oh, great. Just what he needed. He breathed in and out, counting like Kate had taught him one, and - Wait, what?

He blinked and moved his hand so he could look at Derek. "Did you just apologize?"

Derek scowled. "You should be conserving energy."

"Sure," Ascanio said. He made himself smile, as warm as he could manage in the freezing air. "You could tell me why you left without waiting for anybody else and how mad everybody's going to be when we get back."

Derek pressed the back of his hand to Ascanio's forehead. The press of his skin against Ascanio's felt hot, dry, and brief, because Derek pulled back almost the moment Ascanio registered the touch. "I think you're having a bad reaction to whatever they gave you. You should go to sleep."

"Jim's going to have us executed," Ascanio mused. "That's what you're not telling me."

"Jim can't have me executed. I'm not a member of the Pack. And Kate would be mad."

Ascanio looked at his face, but Derek looked completely blank. There was no reading whatever was happening behind his eyes - which had faded back to regular brown. "You don't think Jim cares more about what Curran thinks than Kate?"

"I think Jim thinks he can handle Curran. He did it when he was Chief of Security, he figures he can do it now that he's Beast Lord."

Ascanio laughed. Then groaned, because that made his neck hurt too. "I'm going to tell him you said that."

Now Derek did smile. It was a small, hard smile. "No you aren't."

"No I'm not," Ascanio agreed. As unbelievably annoying as Derek was, Ascanio wouldn't tell on him to Jim. Especially since the Beast Lord wouldn't do anything about it. He glanced over Derek's face and tilted his head, still resting against the cart floor. "But I'll definitely shut up if you explain why you decided to mount a solo rescue mission."

"You're going to keep asking me this." It wasn't a question.

Ascanio crossed his legs. It made his spine twinge in pain, but it also made him look carefree and relaxed. He hoped. "Yep."

Derek sat all the way up, so he was no longer looming over Ascanio. "They were taking too long."

Ascanio waited. The landscape rolled by. The stars stayed blurry, but thin clouds began to dot the sky. The only sound was the low grind of the cart being dragged along the ley line. "Wow," he said, after a full minute had passed. "Enlightenment from a wolf. Not what I was expecting."

"I don't like having to wait while people are hurt," Derek said. His voice was so cold Ascanio checked the clouds for snow. Nothing. Derek kept talking, looking straight forward, the lines of his back and shoulders rigid. "We didn't know if you were here, or the attackers' base in Kennesaw, or one of their houses in Atlanta. Jim wanted to wait for a scout to come back from the houses. Somebody approached one of Clan Bouda while she was running an errand and tried to," and here his voice dipped, "negotiate for your release."

So it had been ransom. Or the destruction of the clan. "What happened?"

"I don't know. Andrea took Kate in, but they wouldn't let me come."

Ascanio thought about that for a minute. Huh. Not wanting to wait around made sense. They weren't _friends,_ or, well. They were kind of friends. He would tell someone who accused him of not being friends with Derek that they were friends, but he didn't know what he would say if Derek asked what they were. The point was he did know Derek. Derek didn't like being told to stand by. What really didn't make sense was that he cared about being told to stand by in Ascanio's case. It wasn't as if they'd been fighting together and a bunch of people had dragged Ascanio off under Derek's nose. It had been random.

And why had Derek even shown up to the meeting in the first place? Kate he could get. Kate liked him. Andrea liked Kate, and Andrea was his alpha, so of course she might call her friend. If the captured attacker had told them about the mages, Andrea would've wanted a mage to fight back with. He guessed Derek might've been with Kate when Andrea called.

He also guessed Derek wouldn't explain that part, if he asked. So instead he said, "Why the woods, and not the base in Kennesaw?"

"I figured you'd make too much noise to get locked up in the city."

"You don't know how much noise I make," Ascanio said, without thinking about it.

It was hard to tell since the clouds had covered up the moon now, and faint colors weren't the kind of thing that stood out in the dark even to shapeshifter eyes, and of course the light from the ley line made it even harder to tell exactly, but it almost looked like Derek's face had gone a little red. "Everybody knows how much noise you make, Ascanio," he muttered.

" _Ouch._ I'm a wounded man, here!"

Derek laughed and then swallowed it like he hadn't meant to let that out. "Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?"

"Would you?" Ascanio flashed the widest grin he could. "I can direct you to all my bruises, if you want. There's a pretty one on my hip. Somebody kicked me real good."

Derek rolled his eyes and gnashed his teeth a bit. It was almost funny. He wanted to strangle somebody so bad, but his code of ethics wouldn't let him throttle somebody who'd already been thoroughly throttled. Ha! Ascanio should really demand his company the next time he got laid up in the medward, it would keep his mind off how much it sucked to be stuck in bed.

For no apparent reason, his brain supplied the image of Derek looming over him in bed, too.

Not a hospital bed in the medward, that would be weird, he knew all the staff there and even Ascanio had his limits. Just a … just a bed. In a dark room. Derek's eyes amber instead of brown.

He decided to stare up at the clouds even though it made him a little queasy to watch them go blurry, too.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

Eventually the ley line spit them out. The cart ground to a halt several yards from the end of the line.

Ascanio would have jumped up if anyone from the Pack had been waiting for them.

Instead, the blonde mage raised her hands and smiled a terrible smile. "The phones worked for us, you dumbasses," she said. Green magic crackled in her palms. "My guy in Kennesaw told me what you did to my people. Prepare to die!"

"Who says 'prepare to die'?" Ascanio asked, rolling off the cart and into a crouch.

"Somebody who needs to die," Derek said.

Now that made Ascanio do a double-take. Banter, from a wolf? Okay, as banter went, that had been pretty flat, but still.

"Shut the fuck up!" the mage shouted.

Chains materialized in the air. They were dull gray metal and shimmered with green magic.

One shot toward Ascanio. His body protested, but he jumped out of the way at the last second. The chain hit the cart and fell harmlessly onto the wood floor. Ascano landed on top of the cart, grabbed the chain, wrapped one end around his wrist, and braced himself for a fight.

But Derek hadn't dodged the chain shot at him. Derek had grabbed it with both hands, lunged forward in the time it'd taken Ascanio to drop down from his jump, and had it wrapped around the mage's neck. He'd slammed her to the ground, and was pulling on it hard enough to make her face go bright red. There was no mistaking that even in the dark. She was clawing at the chain with both hands and kicking at the ground, and Derek was staring down at her, completely expressionless.

"Maybe just knock her out," Ascanio said, thinking of the bodies in the bunker.

Derek raised his head and stared. His eyes had gone amber again.

Ascanio's throat was dry. He hated noticing that, but he did. It also felt like his feet were rooted to the ground. 

"My alphas will want to talk to her," he said.

The mage finally passed out. Derek swallowed but let the chain go loose. They used the two chains to tie the mage up and put her in the cart, which Derek then had to pull because Ascanio wasn't up to it. He did walk, though. He refused to ride in the cart with the mage. Who knew what she would do when she woke up? He watched her until they found a pay phone. Derek called the Keep, collect.

Ascanio also decided that he owed Derek enough not to laugh when Kate started screaming at him for leaving on his own.

***

They got directions to a place where they could wait for reinforcements. The mage woke up. Derek gagged her with her own scarf because she wouldn't stop declaring revenge on them. "I'll see you both destroyed!" she'd shouted, and Derek had looked at Ascanio and said, "Are you gonna yell at me for not wanting to listen to that?" and Ascanio had told him to go ahead. Besides, if she could cuss them out, she could curse them magically, and Ascanio had already dealt with enough for today.

The spot was an empty house. Derek pulled the cart into the garage, and Ascanio pulled the door shut. Derek hauled the mage into the house. They walked through the kitchen to the living room, where there was a fireplace with one sad semi-charred log inside.

Between the two of them they found enough scrap paper to supplement, and started a fire.

Ascanio sat on the couch and sighed. He heard Derek walking up behind him. He shut his eyes.

The next time he opened them, his head was in Derek's lap.

He was lying on his side on the couch, his knees bent so his legs would fit. Derek was sitting at the edge of the couch, one arm stretched along the back. Derek's other hand had settled, of all places, in Ascanio's hair.

Ascanio watched the fire for a minute. It had gotten pretty low. There were only small red tongues of flame crackling around the wads of old newspaper. The log was completely burned now. Every few seconds there was a tiny pop. While he'd been asleep the room had gotten warmer. His breath didn't fog in the air anymore. It wasn't comfortable, but Derek was hot, underneath him, where Ascanio's face was pressed against his thigh.

"You know I'm awake, right?"

Derek said, "Yes."

Neither of them moved. In the corner where they'd left her, the mage kicked the wall.

"You fell asleep," Derek said. "You should go back to sleep."

"Uh-huh."

It was tough on the narrow band of the couch, but Ascanio managed to roll over to his other side. Derek's nose wrinkled and he lifted his hand from Ascanio's hair. He set it down on the arm of the couch instead of back on Ascanio, which was too bad, because Derek was the warmest thing in the room. Ascanio was so tired. He wanted to be warm. He wanted to go back to sleep. Fuck, he could go back to sleep right now. He should've looked for blankets before he sat down. He should tell Derek to go look for blankets.

Oh, damn. They'd forgotten to eat.

Belatedly, he realized he was staring at Derek's stomach, and looked up to meet his eyes. Dark brown. Almost red where the fire reflected in them.

"I normally don't sleep with guys who haven't even bought me dinner," Ascanio murmured, raising one eyebrow.

Derek's hand flexed on the arm of the couch. He looked like he wanted to shove Ascanio to the floor. He breathed out and touched his hand to the back of Ascanio's head instead. His fingers felt hot. "You're delirious. Go back to sleep so the medmages don't lecture me about not making you rest."

"If I'm delirious, I can't be held responsible for anything I say."

Derek stilled.

There was nothing like a still wolf. Ascanio wouldn't trade being a bouda for the world, but he'd worked with Derek enough to appreciate the utter non-movement the man could achieve when he needed to. Not that Ascanio would ever tell him that. Normally it was a focused sort of stillness. Disrupting it meant getting ripped to shreds. Right now, though, Derek's eyes were just wide.

It would be even better if Ascanio had actually thought of anything half-smart to say. He yawned and tried to make "Did you mean what you said, about kissing me better?" sound funny, but all it sounded was like someone who'd been sedated, shifted twice in the course of an hour without eating anything, and hauled half an hour through a ley line.

"No," Derek told him. "Go to sleep. People will be here soon."

"You smell good," Ascanio said, and slept.

***

Someone knocked on Derek's door. He looked up from the sink, rinsed his hands off, and dried them. By the time he was done, there had been a second knock. He sighed and stared at his reflection in his kitchen window. He had been half expecting this. But he had also hoped it would come during the daytime, and not when he'd been about to eat dinner.

He walked to the front of the house and opened the door. "Aren't you supposed to be getting pampered at the Clan Bouda house?" he asked.

Ascanio's eyebrows went up. "Are you not going to say hello?"

"No. I could tell it was you."

"Are you… going to let me in?"

Derek looked Ascanio up and down and let himself look thoughtful. Ascanio rolled his eyes. He was wearing a thick black sweater and snug jeans. New boots, since his old ones had been left behind. No coat though. No scarf or hat, either, even though the city was still covered in ice. Derek usually got up late but he had been avoiding going out at noon because the glare off the snow was so bright it hurt his eyes. At least it hadn't stormed again since they'd gotten back to town.

The line of Ascanio's neck was pale and smooth. No more open wound.

"I don't know," Derek said. He leaned against the doorframe. "I'm still in trouble with your alphas. Maybe I should send you home."

"You won't do that. You want to know why I came."

Derek waited. And waited. But Ascanio didn't say anything else. He just watched Derek's face. Behind Ascanio the subdivision was dark. There were some lights on in everybody else's windows. Probably half of them had looked out when Ascanio drove up to the house, but hopefully none of them were watching now.

Derek sighed. "Why are you here, Ascanio?"

Ascanio leaned forward so his face was very close to Derek's. There was some kind of orange fire in his eyes. He looked dangerous. He looked the way he did before he let out one of those eerie hyena cackles and erupted into a whirlwind of claws or knives. He smiled, and Derek could only see the edge of it, since their faces were so close, but it was a sharp smile.

Ascanio murmured, "I'm here to pay you back for rescuing me."

All Derek could do was blink.

"You should be grateful," Ascanio continued. His voice was almost a purr. Did hyenas purr? Derek suddenly couldn't remember. Ascanio tilted his head to one side, so some of his black hair fell over his forehead. His smile melted into a smirk. Derek didn't appreciate the realization that the back of his neck was hot, or the way Ascanio wet his lips before going on. "I haven't forgotten that you skipped out on that dinner you promised me. But I'm still willing to admit I owe you one."

"Uh," Derek said.

This was not what they did. In the rare event that the stars aligned and it was easier to work with Ascanio than argue with him, this was still not what they did. They finished whatever task - helping Kate with something, doing a favor for Andrea, rescuing your friend from a bunker in the middle of an icy forest - and never talked about it again.

Ascanio said, "You have to let me in first."

Derek stepped to the side. Ascanio entered and confidently walked over to the couch. His hips moved in a way his hips did not need to move to walk. Derek heard himself close the door, and he felt his hand twist the deadbolt into place.

They were very snug jeans.

The last time Derek had seen Ascanio, he'd been whisked off to the medward at the Keep. The swollen bump on his neck had darkened to almost purple by the time they were back in the company of the shifters Jim sent to collect them. Ascanio had been shivering and sweating and he kept trying to turn around and walk back the way they'd come, because he kept remembering he didn't have his boots with him. Derek would've picked him up and hauled him into the medward himself except for the look on Kate's face.

It had just been a bad reaction to the sedative. Someone had interrupted Kate's lecture about teamwork and responsible decision making to let them know.

"The bouda house was getting boring," Ascanio said. He fell down on the couch and sprawled out.

"Are you sure you aren't still delirious?"

"Ha, ha."

"You once told me that my picture would be in the dictionary under the word boring," Derek reminded him.

Ascanio grinned. It made his teeth show. "I'm willing to admit when I've been wrong."

Derek was aware that he was still standing next to the door. His hands hung at his sides. Part of him wanted to go back to the kitchen, but it wasn't like he had already cooked and had food he and Ascanio could just serve themselves. He would have to make something. It was true that he'd washed off a pan and had been planning on making grocery store deli pizza, but it would still mean he'd have cooked a meal that Ascanio then ate. And he wasn't in the mood to think about what it would be like for Ascanio to eat a meal that Derek had cooked.

"They put me in bed and kept bringing me soup. And they took my _shoes._ "

"They took your shoes because you kept trying to walk into the snow," Derek said. He carefully walked across the room and sat down on the other end of the couch.

Ascanio had never been in his house before.

"I only did that the first night," Ascanio said. He folded his arm so he could rest his head on his hand. It made his whole body twist to the side. His hips, too. (Derek should not have been looking at his hips.) "I've been given a clean bill of health. Totally sober. Sadly, I don't even have any bruises left. Don't think I've forgotten _that_ offer."

"I think they should've hid your shoes better. You must still be having a reaction to the sedative."

Ascanio winked. "I know exactly what I'm doing," he said, and then he was in Derek's lap.

Derek's breath caught in his throat.

"This what we call making the first move," Ascanio said. He'd put his knees down on either side of Derek's, and his hands were firmly on Derek's shoulders. It would take actual effort to stand up or push him off - Ascanio wasn't just sitting there, he was holding his lean body in place to keep Derek in place, too. There was a smug grin on his face that Derek had the almost uncontrollable urge to wipe off. "I know you must be unfamiliar with it, on account of being inexperienced and all-"

"I am not _inexperienced,_ " Derek said, instead of, 'Get off me.' He hadn't meant to do that.

"-but I promise to be gentle," Ascanio said, ignoring him.

"I did not ask you to be gentle," Derek hissed. He raised his hands to push Ascanio off him. Somehow, this meant that his fingers ended up digging into Ascanio's stupid black sweater but not actually moving him off Derek's lap.

Ascanio's eyes sparkled. "I can be not-gentle, too."

"Stop that!"

"Stop what, exactly?"

"The-" Derek grit his teeth and swallowed. "The - That voice. Thing. That you're doing."

"Okay," Ascanio said, brightly. His voice had slightly less silk to it, but also he lifted his hands from Derek's shoulders to link his fingers together against the back of Derek's neck, so it was hard to concentrate on the small win. The press of Ascanio's skin against his felt hot. "The way I see it," Ascanio said, "usually, when the knight errant rescues the injured prince-"

"I don't think that's how it goes."

"Shut up," Ascanio told him, still sounding cheerful. He shifted his weight, so his hips pressed against Derek's stomach, and Derek's brain shut off for a brief moment. "Usually, the prince would kiss the knight errant for his troubles."

Derek's face was red. He knew it was red. Shit. The only thing worse than Ascanio being smooth was Ascanio realizing that Derek thought he was being smooth. "That's definitely not how it goes."

"Yeah, well, Kate never made you study medieval literature and folklore for weeks on end," Ascanio told him. He used his grip on the back of Derek's neck to make Derek tilt his face up, so they were looking at each other. That dangerous gleam was back in Ascanio's eyes. "When we did stake-outs, she used to randomly quiz me. I'd be scaling up a wall and answering questions about King Arthur, who, by the way, never existed, so I don't know why I had to know so much about him."

"Yeah. Your life is very difficult." Derek was vaguely aware that his voice had gotten rough.

Ascanio let out a little cackle. It made Derek shudder, which made Ascanio's entire face light up. Not in a bright sunny way. In a lurking in the shadows by the fire way. He looked like he would pounce, if there was any room left between them. "Do you want a kiss or not?"

"Why do you think you have to kiss me?" Derek asked, instead of answering.

He was thinking about the last time Ascanio had been this close to him and how he'd mumbled _You smell good,_ passed out, and failed to bring it up on the trip back to the Keep. Because they didn't talk about things. That was what they did, not talk about things. Not… not climb into each other's laps for the specific purpose of talking about things.

Of course during the trip back to the Keep they'd been surrounded by pissed-off anxious shifters working for Jim and the bouda alphas, and now they were alone in Derek's house. So.

"I never think I _have_ to kiss anybody. But you did leave the Keep without permission, defied a direct request from Kate, went on an incredibly stupid solo mission, and killed two people because I went missing. In the business, we call that sort of thing evidence."

Derek opened his mouth to ask what 'business' Ascanio was referring to, because that was never how _his_ jobs with Kate went.

"Don't," Ascanio warned him.

"I didn't even say anything."

"You never do. This is why everybody around you has been forced to learn to read between the Derek lines. I'd point out that you almost killed a third person for me, too, but I feel like the strongest evidence is that I'm sitting in your lap and you haven't pushed me off."

"I liked you better when you were asleep."

"I'm not into that, sorry. But I could show you how to make me make all that noise you were complaining about."

"Aren't you supposed to offer to make _me_ make noise?"

"See, this is why I call you inexperienced."

Derek gave up. He would show Ascanio inexperienced.

He let go of Ascanio's sweater and cupped his hands against Ascanio's face, so he could press his fingertips against Ascanio's jawline. Ascanio let him, but he also gave Derek a deeply indulgent look, like he was enjoying watching Derek try to flirt and expected him to fail. Or to be easily outdone, maybe.

Derek pulled Ascanio down with both hands and kissed him. The rumble of pleasure that bubbled up from under Ascanio's ribs rolled through Derek, too. Derek dropped his hands. He settled one on Ascanio's arm and wrapped the other over Ascanio's thigh. Ascanio pressed forward, eager, one of his hands sliding to fist in Derek's hair. His hips rolled against the low curve of Derek's stomach.

And before Ascanio could start thinking he was in control of this situation, Derek nipped at his lower lip and flipped Ascanio flat on his back on the couch, one of Derek's knees between his legs.

Ascanio sucked in a breath. His mouth was reddened and his eyes sparked with fire.

"What else does the knight get in these stories?" Derek asked.

"Whatever the hell he wants," Ascanio said, and pulled him down for another kiss.

It was a good kiss.

Actually, Derek would never ever tell Ascanio this because he would never live it down, but he thought it was the best kiss of his life.


End file.
